The Scuba News Cayman Islands

Life evolved to live within limits. It’s a delicate balance. Humans need oxygen, but too much can kill us. Plants need nitrogen, but excess nitrogen harms them, and pollutes rivers, lakes and oceans. Ecosystems are complex. Our health and survival depend on intricate interactions that ensure we get the right amounts of clean air, water, food from productive soils and energy from the sun.

The Whitsundays is a collection of 74 islands off of Australia’s central east coast and part of the majestic world heritage site, the Great Barrier Reef. Second only to Cairns, it is one of the most popular places for tourists to visit the reef. It attracts nearly 600,000 visitors each year with over 300 tour boats in operation. Due to the popularity of this particularly beautiful and accessible part of the reef, much damage has been caused due to the dropping of anchors. This habitat loss has then become one of the most widespread causes of marine species decline on the Great Barrier Reef.

My number one priority for new divers is to own a good, big Surface Marker Buoy (SMB), and know how to use it. Practice deploying on every dive so you are familiar and comfortable with using it. Buy one that is at least five-feet tall so you are visible to boaters. The biggest mistake people make with SMB’s is not keeping tension on the line. If there is not tension on the line the SMB will not stand up. It will just lie on the surface and cannot be seen.

We got nine divers together from the Vancouver Diving Locker on Sept. 18 to clean up some of the junk that got collected over the summer months at Buntzen Lake. After meeting in the morning to sort out all gear rentals, mesh bags and lights we travelled to beautiful Buntzen Lake. Some divers meeting us there were already on the site with their gear ready to go and keen to get that lake cleaned up.

Salmon have been swimming in Pacific Northwest waters for at least seven million years, as indicated by fossils of large saber-tooth salmon found in the area. During that time, they’ve been a key species in intricate, interconnected coastal ecosystems, bringing nitrogen and other nutrients from the ocean and up streams and rivers to spawning grounds, feeding whales, bears and eagles and fertilizing the magnificent coastal rainforests along the way.